Suggestions and comments for my sites please

[Garibaldi]

Hello Everyone,

Currently I have two websites that I've been working on for a few months. They are the first sites that I've done and as such I'd like your opinions on them and any suggestions or comments you could give. The first one is dedicated to cars, specifically collector cars. It can be found at Wisconsin Collector Car . Also could you take a look at my forum on there: Wisconsin Collector Car Forum and see if there are any recommendations of MODs or different templates that you might add to it to make it better. My other site is Madtown Services, a services site for my corner of the globe.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it!

[Supreme2k]

The only design change that I would suggest on the main site is to change the background color. white text on a completely black bg gives it a kind of warez/kidz look.

As far as the forum, I'd put in the Quick Reply*, and an image upload (if you have the space/bandwidth).

*if it's not there already. I didn't register.

[Garibaldi]

The only design change that I would suggest on the main site is to change the background color. white text on a completely black bg gives it a kind of warez/kidz look.

As far as the forum, I'd put in the Quick Reply*, and an image upload (if you have the space/bandwidth).

*if it's not there already. I didn't register.

Thanks for the quick reply I reall appreciate it!!

I have considered changing the background color, the reason I did it when I first created the site was to show the highlight rollovers on the menu bar. Do you think a light grey would be better? What text color then, black maybe?

As for the forum you're welcome to join! I do have a nice quick reply box there. It has smilies, quotes, and sigs built right in which is good. As for the image upload that is a very complicated MOD, but I do have a free Photo Gallery where users can upload pics and then link to them that way, which works pretty good.

[stiltman]

I wouldn't go with 800x600 or what ever it's set at.

[Garibaldi]

I wouldn't go with 800x600 or what ever it's set at.

What do you mean? How should I do it, make the width=100% or something?

[stiltman]

yep, or design it for 600x480 as that's still the defacto standard. Your's is over 800 in width

[Garibaldi]

That would only be a problem for people with 800x600 resolution though, right?
Thanks Stiltman.

[stiltman]

Yep.

Just set your res to 6x4 then 8x6...etc and see how it looks.

If you can, use % instead of size, that way it will resize automatically to their browser.

[DiablosuX102]

I have a few comments (from a 16 year old's point of view) for your Wisconsin Car Collector website.

The paragraph just under the top banner of the homepage is a little bit long... I would shorten it or maybe move it to a different part of the site. Also, amazingly a lot of people still use 800x600 res., I suppose because of small monitors? I've met people who browse in a window rather than full screen too. So, I would definitely try to optimize for 800x600 users. Take a look at the videohelp homepage for example.

On your links page some of the text under "Collector Car Links" seems to spread over to the text under "Other Links". I would space them apart a little better. Everything else looks great though, I like the design. I just starting working with website production so I'm still learning as well, what did you use to create it? Good luck!

Josh

[Garibaldi]

Thanks Stiltman and Josh for your help!

I'll add the width=100% to the pages to help them adapt to smaller resolutions. Hopefully this will take care of that problem.

As for the paragraph on the homepage, the reason I made it so long is search engines look for text and keywords in the text on websites, so the reason I made it so long was to help make my site appear on google. I agree it is pretty long though.

I'll also take a look at that text on my links page.


Thanks alot for your suggestions, let me know if you have any others!

[Supreme2k]

Put the message in your meta-tags, removing all the prepositions and such (a, the, are, etc.)

You could put the first paragraph thusly:

Welcome to a website for people interested in classic cars.
We have a very complete list of Car Shows in Southern Wisconsin for 2005. We are also adding more and more events from an every increasing area, now including the Chicago area. We hope to provide you with a comprehensive and detailed guide for finding all the shows this year. Be sure to check out the Photo Gallery section of our site and even add your own. You can talk with fellow car enthusiasts in our Collector Car Forum. Enjoy the site!

You may be able to shorten it even more. You can put the detailed paragraph (and more) on an "About Us" page.

[stiltman]

As for the paragraph on the homepage, the reason I made it so long is search engines look for text and keywords in the text on websites, so the reason I made it so long was to help make my site appear on google.

Old school. I suggest searching google on how to improve your search results

BTW, I have a page that lists over 100 words that google sees, but you can't. Also, link to other pages within you domain.

There are many ways to fool search engines, don't get caught up in the 'visual" text of the pages

[thecoalman]

There are many ways to fool search engines, don't get caught up in the 'visual" text of the pages

Content, content, content.... that's what you need. Inbound links, correct markup, and few other tricks work as well. Trying to fool search engines especially using things such as cloaking etc will only get your domain blacklisted.

[smearbrick1]

In your Ford pictures section, you have two Firebirds. Firebirds should probably be listed under Pontiac, correct?

[Garibaldi]

Put the message in your meta-tags, removing all the prepositions and such (a, the, are, etc.)

You could put the first paragraph thusly:

Welcome to a website for people interested in classic cars.
We have a very complete list of Car Shows in Southern Wisconsin for 2005. We are also adding more and more events from an every increasing area, now including the Chicago area. We hope to provide you with a comprehensive and detailed guide for finding all the shows this year. Be sure to check out the Photo Gallery section of our site and even add your own. You can talk with fellow car enthusiasts in our Collector Car Forum. Enjoy the site!

You may be able to shorten it even more. You can put the detailed paragraph (and more) on an "About Us" page.

Ok, I'll try that. One thing I heard about search engines is they may reject your site if you repeat the same word too many times in your meta tags, is that true?

Content, content, content.... that's what you need. Inbound links, correct markup, and few other tricks work as well. Trying to fool search engines especially using things such as cloaking etc will only get your domain blacklisted.

Does the content in the forum count? I think that really helps sum up alot of what the site represents in many different areas and aspects. I have noticed a bunch of MSN Bots on the forum but no google ones.

In your Ford pictures section, you have two Firebirds. Firebirds should probably be listed under Pontiac, correct?

Yep good call, one of the users probably uploaded them and I just approve them without looking because there are so many pics, I'll change that now - thanks.

[Supreme2k]

Ok, I'll try that. One thing I heard about search engines is they may reject your site if you repeat the same word too many times in your meta tags, is that true?

That's kind of what I meant about losing some of the words. Put the paragraph in meta (if you must), then take out little words and repeated words.

[offline]

Virus removal, video production and lawn mowing?

BTW nice clean layout, easy to use and low on the
eye candy. There should be more websites like it!
Good work.

[thecoalman]

Search engines will index your forum and other pages deeper in your site, how much depends on the relevance of the site. This is one of the resons you want to use correct directory structures, a search engine will put more relevance on http://www.yoursite.com/index.html than it will onhttp://www.yoursite.com/directory/index.html You don't want to overload the top directorys either. I for instance have only one page at http://www.yoursite.com/

As far as meta tags go and keywords I think there's a happy medium but personally I think your better off just using natural formatting. My coal site appears in the top 10 in both images and keyword searches for some of the words I'm looking for and it's heavily laden with meta tags for them, but they also should naturally be there.

One of the keys is the inbound links and surrounding text which gives relevance to the page in serp's. If you have a page that's titled Wisconsin Car Colletor and you have meta tags, and text with those words and whole bunch of people link to it with a text link of the same it will gain relevance for that search.

Virus removal, video production and lawn mowing?

BTW nice clean layout, easy to use and low on the
eye candy. There should be more websites like it!
Good work.

He even has his own lawn mower for the mowing.

[Garibaldi]

Virus removal, video production and lawn mowing?

BTW nice clean layout, easy to use and low on the
eye candy. There should be more websites like it!
Good work.

Thanks, that was basically what I was going for, making it clean and efficient rather than very bloated so even dialup users won't have a problem with it.

Search engines will index your forum and other pages deeper in your site, how much depends on the relevance of the site. This is one of the resons you want to use correct directory structures, a search engine will put more relevance on http://www.yoursite.com/index.html than it will onhttp://www.yoursite.com/directory/index.html You don't want to overload the top directorys either. I for instance have only one page at http://www.yoursite.com/

As far as meta tags go and keywords I think there's a happy medium but personally I think your better off just using natural formatting. My coal site appears in the top 10 in both images and keyword searches for some of the words I'm looking for and it's heavily laden with meta tags for them, but they also should naturally be there.

One of the keys is the inbound links and surrounding text which gives relevance to the page in serp's. If you have a page that's titled Wisconsin Car Colletor and you have meta tags, and text with those words and whole bunch of people link to it with a text link of the same it will gain relevance for that search.

offline wrote:
Virus removal, video production and lawn mowing? laugh.gif

BTW nice clean layout, easy to use and low on the
eye candy. There should be more websites like it!
Good work.


He even has his own lawn mower for the mowing.

So if I include words in my meta tags like

cars, events, pictures, wisconsin, shows, swap meet

Without repeating the word cars many times in the tags would it still get high hits if someone searched for car events or car shows on google even though that combination of words isn't specifically included in the meta tags?

As far as the lawn mowing that's there as a kind of space filler.. I do have a nice riding lawn mower, and mowing (yes I love the smell of grass in the morning ) is a quick way to make some extra cash.

[Guest]

More hooters

[wolfer]

sorry wrong post

[offline]

closing this

I recommend Wisconsin Collector Car as it has great info and pics
for classic car lovers + friendly advice about all types of cars.